A sour note in an otherwise upbeat year-end earnings report: eBay CEO Meg Whitman admitted the financial performance of the online auction firm's voice-over-IP operation, Skype, was disappointing last year. EBay said Skype had generated $195 million in revenue during 2006. "The monetization efforts we outlined at the time of the acquisition [of Skype] are not developing as quickly as we had hoped," Whitman said on a conference call with analysts. EBay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion.

Still, Whitman said she was pleased with Skype's tripling of registered users last year to 171 million, and she pointed to a revenue burst for the VoIP service of $66 million for the fourth quarter, 164% over the year-ago quarter.

A strong holiday season was credited for eBay's overall fourth-quarter sales of $1.7 billion, up 29% from a year ago.